The Grand Delusion

Great powers should never entangle themselves in tribal conflicts. That lessons has been lost on the Bush administration, which has managed to tie down U.S. troops in the middle of a civil war in the heart of the Middle East. The U.S. faces a diabolic choice: 1) Leave Iraq and watch the country explode or 2) stay and allow a disastrous war to sap America’s financial and military strength. The Iraq war has revealed Bush’s moral clarity to be nothing but a mushy mirage.

The conventional wisdom among conservative commentators is that the surge is working. Critics of the war, they contend, are in a state of denial about the reductions in violence and the political progress being made. Even worse, conservative commentators insist, opponents of the war calling for a withdrawal would consign the U.S. to a humiliating defeat just when victory is within reach. Once again, so the argument goes, liberals are so blinded by their hatred of President Bush that they would hand al-Qaeda a decisive military and propaganda victory.

All of this reflects a complete misunderstanding of what is happening in Iraq. Put simply, only a small fraction of the violence in Iraq is instigated by al-Qaeda affiliated groups; the vast majority involves criminal gangs, sectarian militias, and the like fighting it out for political supremacy. The U.S. military is the only force capable of preventing Iraq from descending into a full-scale civil war that the ill-advised invasion and botched occupation precipitated in the first place.

Rampant corruption is a virtually ineradicable impediment to reconstruction and political reconciliation. Criminal enterprises and politicians are siphoning off the country’s oil revenue to line their pockets and build their power bases, which insures that there are insufficient resources to rebuild a unified and pluralistic Iraq. Violence is down for several reasons that have little to do with the surge. First, much of the ethnic cleansing has already taken place as the country has been divided up into ethnic enclaves. Second, Sunni insurgents, recognizing they were on the losing end of a civil war, have made a short-term tactical alliance with the U.S. military in the hopes of bolstering their financial and military position for the day the expect to take on the Shiite led government.

Subsidizing Sunni security forces has bought a temporary lull in violence, but it carries with it long-term costs, both to the U.S taxpayer and in so far as it amounts to arming a force opposed to the government we are counting on to keep Iraq from disintegrating. It is ironic in the extreme, of course, to see the Bush administration handing out cash to Sunni security forces patrolling neighborhoods in Iraq while at the same time millions of our fellow citizens are facing foreclosures here at home. When Americans begin to realize that we are paying former Sunni insurgents not to fight us I expect the architect of this debacle, George W. Bush, will be about as popular as Heather Mills would be at a Beatles convention.

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Is the Surge Really Working?

The surge in Iraq may be succeeding (at least on a superficial tactical level) but America is sinking thanks to the strategic ineptitude of the Bush administration. John McCain, according to the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson, is close to clinching the Republican nomination because he courageously embraced Bush’s troop surge, and now that unpopular decision, Gerson argues, is in the process of being vindicated.

To be sure, any reduction in violence is a welcome sign, but the notion that the United States is achieving momentum towards “victory” reflects a tragic misunderstanding on part of Republicans. The United States could eventually achieve stability in Iraq, but at this stage any victory is likely to prove phyrric. That is, any “benefits” will amount to averting and mitigating consequences and potential worst-case scenarios set in motion by the ill-considered invasion and disastrously managed occupation itself. Stabilizing Iraq may have at best a neutral impact on global terrorism, though in all-likelihood America’s presence in region will be a rallying cry for jihadists for decades to come. Put simply, Iraq became the spawning ground for a new generation of anti-Western foot soldiers who can take battlefield experience and techniques gleaned in Iraq to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Europe, and elsewhere.

Bush’s theory that a democratic Iraq would transform the Middle East has been turned on its head. Spreading liberty as a way of reducing terrorism was a tempting panacea at best, but it is proving simplistic and false. The United States can continue to pour blood and treasure into Iraq, but in the interim it is neglecting its own crumbling infrastructure and the investments it needs to secure a more prosperous economic future. Ironically, at the very moment it’s own resilience is being sorely tested the country is facing a series of virtually unprecedented environmental calamities. Responsible scientists will not attribute any one event to global warming, but taken as a whole the wildfires, tornadoes, and other natural disasters we’ve seen of late are beginning to represent a scale of devastation forecast by Al Gore and experts on global climate change. On this issue, tragically, George Bush and his conservative minions resemble nothing so much as a flock of ostriches with their collective heads in the sand.

The cultural anthropologist Jared Diamond, in his book Collapse, observes how the decline of great powers are often associated with military defeats on the periphery of empire, which in truth mask ecological collapse at home. There is no doubt – none whatsoever – that the seven years of the Bush administration have led to an unprecedented decline in America’s strategic, moral, and economic strength. In simple terms, the United States is in a vicious cycle: Borrowing money to purchase oil from Middle East, which empowers anti-American forces, while simultaneously contributing to the high level of carbon emissions that fuel global warming. Bush, for his part, seems oblivious to the fact that American taxpayers are funding both sides in the terror war. To add insult to injury, many victims of Katrina and the tornadoes in the South have family members serving in Iraq. We are stuck in a war we never should have launched while the Bush administration completely ignored the gathering threat posed by environmental calamities fueled by global warming, which our own imprudent and unsustainable energy habits helped bring about.

Great leaders have a sense for the arc of history. That is, they see where history is going and they prepare their people to face the challenges of the future. Al Gore, for instance, has been trying to educate the public on global warming for three decades. He was also prescient – in a way Bush is incapable of – in recognizing the potential the U.S. led invasion and occupation of Iraq would have to ignite sectarian conflict that could destabilize the entire Middle East.

Gore (and most Democrats) understand that confronting the challenge of Islamic extremism will take a lot more that marshalling America’s military power; it will take diplomatic suasion and bi-partisan cooperation to rally the world behind a comprehensive strategy to increase the ideological appeal of America and its Western values (especially women’s rights and the separation of church and state) while reducing the appeal of Islamic extremism. It will also entail taking the United States beyond the carbon era.

Gore’s rational approach to problem solving contrasts sharply with Bush’s disastrous faith-based approach to governing. Conservative ideologues like Bush see terrorism as a manifestation of ontological Evil, a superstitious outlook that engenders a historical form of madness akin to the Salem witch trials or the Inquisition. It is no accident, for instance, that Bush’s response to the challenge of terrorism includes waterboarding and other forms of torture generally associated with the Middle Ages. Indeed, his style of leadership hearkens back to the Divine Right of Kings, the long discredited notion that a political leader functions as God’s regent here on earth.

The historian Arnold Toynbee observed that the rise of religious fundamentalism is invariably a sign of civil decline. He also observed that civilizations that attempt meet existential challenges by remaking the rest of the world (especially far-flung outposts on the periphery of empire) are invariably less successful that than civilizations that remake and renew themselves from within. This insight goes along way in explaining the Bush tragedy; the Bush administration has effectively outsourced America’s national security to Iraq’s security forces.

The surge has produced some tactical advantages, but there are compelling reasons to doubt they can be sustained. For one thing, widespread corruption governing the dispersion of oil revenues does not bode well for a political reconciliation. Further, Iraq’s various militias recognize the surge is by its nature of limited duration. Thus, they have every incentive to lay low and/or play-up their al-Qaeda fighting bona fides in the hopes of procuring as much American aid and equipment before Iraq enters the next phase when American troops begin to draw down in the Spring/Summer of 2008.

America’s predicament in Iraq resembles a Zugswang, which is a situation in chess where every possible move you make will leave you worse off. The United States may prevail in Iraq, yet maintaining the present commitment is likely to further hasten America’s decline. Those among Bush’s dwindling number of apologist who still believe that some decades from now the United States will be able to declare “Mission Accomplished” should remember the words of King Pyrrhus: “one more victory such as this and we are ruined.”

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William Kristol and Fairy Tales

William Kristol is to serious political commentary what Liberace is to classical music; sure, he's got some talent, but the closer you listen to him the worse he sounds. Kristol, of course, has been one of the most indefatigable cheerleaders for the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. Recently, he has taken to chastising leading Democrats for opposing the so-called surge, contending that Bush’s decision to increase the number of troops in Baghdad was an act of great political courage that has turned the tide in Iraq.

As someone who opposed the war – but after much agonizing reluctantly concluded that the surge was probably the best of our really bad options – I am deeply skeptical of Kristol’s glib assessment that the surge is in the process of being vindicated. Put simply, the surge has bought the Bush administration some valuable time, but the underlying conditions in Iraq remain anything but conducive to a national reconciliation.

The inherently limited duration of the surge has brought a short-term reduction in violence, but there are numerous reasons to believe the tactical momentum General Petraeus has achieved will prove to be something of a mirage. For one thing, nearly every force allied against the United States – from Sadr’s militia to al-Qaeda in Iraq – has an incentive to lay low before the U.S. is forced to reduce troop levels sometime later in 2008. Second, The Sunni militias we are arming to fight al-Qaeda now may turn their weapons against the Iraqi government later. And third, so long as corruption remains rampant, and the disbursement of political power and Iraqi oil revenues is based on tribal affiliations, then Iraq is likely to remain a dysfunctional state. U.S. troops, in short, are likely to be tied down in Iraq for decades in order to prevent the country from disintegrating into a Hobbesian nightmare.

Kristol chides Democrats for failing to "celebrate" progress in Iraq. I have to say I find Kristol’s snide obtuseness here morally repugnant. Four million Iraqis have been displaced from their homes, between 160,000 and 600,000 Iraqis have been killed, and "success" has been defined down so much that achieving it may mean little more than mitigating the threats unleashed by the invasion and botched occupation itself. Put simply, Kristol resembles nothing so much as an analyst who hyped Enron’s stock and then cleared his conscience by recommending investors could recoup their losses by selling their certificates on e-Bay.

Here, it is worth remembering that invading and occupying Iraq has not advanced America’s strategic interests. On the contrary, morally, fiscally, and militarily the occupation has been a catastrophe that has isolated, drained, divided, and diverted the United States in ways that have diminished its capacity to respond to other vital challenges. For instance, it has impeded our efforts to capture or kill bin Laden, which would have been a surefire way of delivering a knockout blow to al-Qaeda. Instead, the Bush administration led America astray with its quixotic fairly tale of turning Iraq into a beacon of democracy that would supposedly inspire a regional transformation in the Middle East).

Bush has bet not only his legacy on succeeding in Iraq, but also America’s future. The emergence of democracy, however, takes at minimum a generation, but by that time the nuclear genie may be out of the bottle as Islamic extremists based in Pakistan, Europe, or even the United States may have already detonated a WMD in a major American city. The enormous resources in blood and treasure America invested in Iraq may easily come to naught overnight. The historian Arnold Toynbee would have recognized the folly of the Bush administration’s faith-based foreign policy. After all, as he observed societies that reform themselves are more apt to succeed than societies that attempt to reform the rest of the world. If the past is prologue, Cassandra’s pessimism will prove more prophetic than the Pollyannaish fairy tale that that the Neocons like Kristol sold Bush on.

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